My position is this: as long as you know you won't be legally punished for
it, violate software patents whenever you can!
Software patents are unjust, and we should pretend they're not there as long
as it is safe. Ogg and other Xiph formats are better still (in multiple
ways).
Fedora doesn't include some patented software like mp3 codecs and DVD
decoding, but that's because they're a major distro backed by Red Hat (a
large company with a large amount of money at stake). So, they're actually
liable to be sued if they included it. Trisquel isn't really in such a
position at this time.
